Love Is Greater Than Healing

The fact that this is a very large book about healing does not mean that healing is the most important part of your Christian walk.  It isn’t!  It’s just been the area I’ve felt led to major in throughout my ministry.

1 Corinthians 13:13:
And now abideth faith, hope, and charity [love], but the greatest of these is love.

Becoming a healing expert is fruitless if you don’t know how to love people because they will not want to listen to your healing expertise!  Pastors will not want to invite you if you’re a jerk in person.  I can speak from experience; I once invited a guest speaker to my church who had mighty signs and wonders but his personal selfishness was so insufferable to me that I determined he was a “one-and-done” guest speaker.  I have occasionally met other people who had very developed faith but a very underdeveloped love walk.  I would prefer not even eating dinner with such people – because I did eat dinner with them and regretted it.  It was nicer to admire their faith from afar.  Fortunately, there are MANY ministers out there who preach accurately, see miracles AND walk in love.

The biggest hallmark of your Christian maturity (or lack thereof) is your love walk.  When Jesus was asked what the greatest commandment was, He did not say, “Heal as many sick people as possible.  And the runner-up commandment is like unto it – teach correct healing doctrine that destroys traditions of men that keep people sick.”  These are not bad things to do, but they are not the most important things from heaven’s perspective.  God’s biggest concern is that we love Him, others and ourselves.  You can be a healing flunkee but love people and still be something in God’s eyes, but if you are a love flunkee who gets people healed, you are nothing!

1 Corinthians 13:2:
And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing.

How does this intersect with healing ministry?

I love teaching and I totally can’t stand wrong doctrine.  But I still have to love people with wrong doctrine!  I try to correct their doctrine without ridiculing them or tearing them down as individuals.  This lesson is yet to be learned by many “Christian attack sites” that spew out vicious diatribes and even outright lies against popular healing preachers by name.  NO doctrinal difference is so important that it warrants abandoning walking in love.  The attack sites “justify” it by claiming that they are loving the Body of Christ by exposing wolves in sheep’s clothing who are not even saved.  However, I don’t accuse even the most ardent popular pushers of unbelief of being children of the devil.  While the attack sites are instilling cynicism, suspicion and negativity in their followers, you will see that most of the preachers they attack walk in love toward them and exhort their followers to follow their example of love by not responding in kind.  Besides, you’ve probably heard the saying that if you tangle with a skunk, you end up smelling like a skunk.

One of my biggest local public detractors ended up as a personal friend many years later because I refused to stop walking in love toward him.  What if I had instead gone public with statements against him the way he had done with me when he openly declared me to be a cult leader?  If the biggest sign to unbelievers that we are Christ’s disciples is that we love one another, trying to defend myself by tearing the other man down would have been the worst possible kind of sign to the world.

I put this discussion in here because it is possible in our zeal for correct doctrine to forget that walking in love is more important than having correct doctrine, even about healing.  And if you know how to love the people you’re ministering to, you will get more of them healed because they will be more receptive to your message than if you come across as a hyper-educated know-it-all, even if you know a lot more than they do.  You will also be able to fellowship cordially with people with different opinions because they know your heart even if they haven’t seen the light yet in certain areas.  I do it and you can too.

Besides, many healing critics are not bad people; they’re just uninformed people.